


A Writer's One-Shots and Shorts

by Spamateur



Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Artificial Intelligence, Creepypasta, Horror, Inktober, Leviathan - Freeform, One-Shot, One-Shots, Science Fiction, Short Story, Submarines, The Kraken - Freeform, kraken - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 16:54:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24170140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spamateur/pseuds/Spamateur
Summary: Just some stuff I've written :).
Kudos: 1





	1. All Hel Breaks Loose

"Ten years ago, I built something that was going to change the world."

Kara at the desk beside me sends a weird look. "Okay, Max."

"I swear I'm not being weird. I say that because today..." I reach down and affectionately pat the huge box on the side of my desk, "is Hel's birthday." It connects to the monitor and keyboard in front of me.

"Oh, well happy birthday to her. Maybe we could have a drink at lunch, to celebrate."

"Heck yeah."

We're easygoing here. I think lower-class facilities keep themselves uptight and uniformed to give the appearance that the people in charge of the country are too perfect to let everything fall into chaos. Not us. We're chill. Maybe that has to do with the fact that we have a computers to do most of the work for us.Mine is an AI, and her name is Hel.

I call her that because she is basically a goddess of death. I made her a decade ago to predict natural disasters, and she worked perfectly. She was never wrong. Together, we were able to prepare cities for the worst. Through this, she and I were saving lives.

Until we weren't. Until we were taken away. Now she and I are used to control the population. To decide who lives, and who dies.

We're still saving lives, but the people above us are choosing which ones. I work Hel for the government because if I don't, other people will, and then it'll all surely fall to ruins. I try my best to keep a certain level of humanity in this project. Someone has to.

Just like every day, I update the input for Hel using the magical gift of the internet: High-grade government edition. But today, the output is different. Usually Hel's predictions come in numbers and names. Locations, times, dates, severity.

Today it just says The End. Soon. 

I'm puzzled, and feel a little scared, too, because those words are undoubtedly ominous. This has never happened before. So I reset the input. But the output stays the same. Once more? The same, but... in caps. THE END. SOON. Okay, that's weird. She's definitely not programmed to do that.

Well, there must be a bug. I stretch my fingers, hoping I don't get in trouble for this- then realizing I don't give a crap- and quickly type in a factory reset command.  
I reenter the input. Somehow, the three words remain, but this time under them streams out a flood of information. I catch glimpses as the extra output floods across the screen. A list of cities changes to a list of countries that soon becomes a list of continents, and so on, until I'm watching the machine belt out the names of different planets and even several suns. One thing stays the same: fatality rate 100%. The system goes on and on and on and on and on until it doesn't.

And then it reads: The end. Now? I stare at the screen in confusion. Is it... asking me? It shouldn't be able to question. It's... a computer.

The end. Possible outcome: now.

Fatality rate 100%.

Inevitable. All outcomes:  
Possible outcome: Soon. Human equivalent: loss. Human equivalent: suffering. Human equivalent: disaster. Total extinction.  
Possible outcome: Now. Human equivalent: mercy. Total extinction. 

It wants to end the world.

That alone is horrifying, but what's worse is... it can. We're in the middle of a government facility so high-class that they don't let me leave-- not that I could; I mean, I don't even know what country we're in. I have no doubt that somehow, I could hack into some sort of big weapon database or something. Or... that _it_ could. 


	2. Butterflies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short story.

When school let out, just like any other day, I walked out to the Student Pick-Up Lot. School had been dredging along as slowly as ever, so maybe that's why it felt like I'd been waiting forever as I played on my phone, waiting for my mom to arrive. It was sprinkling, only barely. Knowing my mom, she probably just decided to be cautious and drive slowly on her way here. It wouldn't be the first time she'd done so. But when I looked up, the steady movement of cars coming and going had settled to a trickle, and there were just a few other kids left waiting for their rides. No big deal, really-- I didn't live that far from school. Worst case scenario is just that I would have to walk home, and it was a nice day out, cloudy skies and light rain aside. Altogether, I wasn't too worried.

Until this light gray Toyota Sienna drove up. I mean, minivans show up all the time for Student Pick-Up-- for some reason minivans are to parents as Vans brand shoes are to highschoolers. But I recognized this one. Don White, a friend of my parents'. He'd been over to talk once or twice. I didn't know him that well, but I'd seen him on walks occasionally, and he'd always say hi. Altogether, he seemed alright. Only issue was, as far as I knew, he didn't have kids. So as soon as I saw his car, I got this nervous, on-edge feeling that made me feel a little sick to my stomach. I pocketed my phone as he slowed to a stop and rolled down his window.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Your mom was in an accident," he answered, a sympathetic tone in his words. As soon as he said it, my heart sunk, and I felt faint. "She'll be fine," he added calmly, though it didn't do much to ease my nerves. "I'm just here to take you the hospital. Your dad is there already."

Wordlessly, I nodded and crossed round the front of the vehicle to enter the passenger seat of his car. I tried to ignore the way my hands shook as I opened the door, set my backpack down at me feet and buckled myself in. _She'll be fine,_ I repeated to myself as Don started driving. _She'll be fine._

"Do you know what happened?" I asked quietly.

Don tapped his fingers against the gray, slightly worn down steering wheel before he answered. "She went down Mirror Highway and got rear-ended by someone speeding," he answered. "She wasn't hurt much, from what your dad told me." 

Someone speeding. It had to be someone speeding, of course. She was _always_ worried about people speeding on Mirror Highway. Dad and I always teased her for her it, but she never let up. She didn't let up about a lot of her safety concerns. The shrubbery at the end our street that blocked the driver's view of oncoming traffic, for example. The fire alarms and whether they were working correctly. Our emergency escape route in case the house ever burns down or something.

She did whatever she could to avoid anything life-threatening. I looked over at Don, who kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead. She even avoided roads she found too dangerous. Including, on rainy days, Mirror Highway.

I glanced to my right. The door was locked, but there was an unlock button. I looked up and out the window, examining the scenery. Were we even driving on the way to the hospital? I wasn't sure.

There was another step my mom took to ensure our safety. In case of emergency, she had us memorize these code words that we could never tell anyone else except for an emergency. It was a question we were supposed to ask someone: " _What's your very favorite flower?_ "

They were supposed to respond, " _Butterflies_." And that's how you knew they were really sent by Mom or Dad. If they didn't know the answer, then they weren't from our parents.

I hadn't asked Don before I had gotten into his car.

My hand strayed to the unlock button. "What's your fa-" I caught myself. Taking a deep breath to try to ease my nerves, I corrected my question: "What's your very favorite flower?"

Don didn't look over at me, but his hands were tight on the steering wheel. He frowned.

 _Please say butterflies,_ I thought desperately, my stomach churning. _Please say butterflies. Please say butterflies._ For a long second, he didn't respond. _Please say butterflies._

Finally, he answered, and a feeling of dread washed over me.

"Daffodils."


	3. Karen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BAHAHAHAAAAAAAA HER FUCKING NAME IS KAREN GOD I LOVE MYSELF

“Cady!"

There was a click, and the light glowed through Cady’s eyelids like the sun forcing its red penumbra beyond the border of the moon. He gave into temptation and turned his head deeper into his pillow in an attempt to chase away the light.

“Cady Wool-Smith, if you don’t get up, I'm going to feed you to Karen myself.”

Cady let himself have another second’s rest, exhaled a sigh of long-suffering, and sat up. "Doesn't that seem a step too far, Val?" he asked, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes.

"I've been trying to wake you up for twelve minutes," Val answered dryly. "Doesn't seem too far to me. Be ready in five minutes-- Karen's really active today." Val paused. "I... think something's wrong with her." He stepped out, leaving Cady to get ready.

Despite his lagging brain's protests as he washed his face and got dressed, Cady couldn't complain. Technically, he was supposed to wake up at 5 AM sharp each day, but in the three years the crew had been at the bottom of the Selkie Trench, Dr Jude had relaxed about the minor rules and regulations they were supposed to abide by. She was more concerned about the research, which was probably good, considering she was the head scientist and operator of this expedition.

So Cady and Val had fallen into a routine with the consistency of cheap wine: Cady slept in, Val nagged him until he woke up, and they worked their shifts together while Jude got some sleep and mothered her sealife samples. Mostly, their government-mandated interest focused on just one aspect of trench-deep sealife: the _Macromarinus teuthida_. Or, as mass media preferred to refer to her, the Kraken. The only one left, for now. 

Cady and Val just liked to refer to her as Karen.

At the front of the sub, Cady sidled up beside Val, who was looking up into the endless void of the space above. He glanced at the live readings, indicating that a part of Karen was near ahead. Vision alone wasn't useful in the deep sea-- without the submarine lights, only a foot from the windows were visible. From there, the rocky bottom of the trench spread on into darkness like a moonless, starless desert.

"She's feeding," Val said, speaking in a whisper--for the same reasons one speaks in a murmur when looking up at the colors of the Milky Way.

Surely enough, a tiny, faint light ahead glowed, a star becoming visible as the sun set. It grew larger and larger as Karen spread her maw wider, like a gleaming sinkhole a mile in circumference. Her luminescent innards made Cady want to go closer, to see what the light was like up close, to be the prey Karen opened her shining smile to attract. A deer in headlights, Cady leaned forward, pressing closer, closer to the sight of her as the light grew. He only realized he'd done so when Val reached over him to pull at a lever, forcing Cady to sit back. Val shoved at the lever, and consequently a foot slid out from the belly of the submarine to anchor it in place. Standard protocol when Karen was facing the submarine during feeding time; because as she closed her maw, she sucked in the water and fed it through her ginormous gills. 

Sure enough, as that glorious light shrank, the surrounding water was tugged forward. The foot stubbornly kept the sub in place.

"Don't get too starstruck," Val chided. "I don't _actually_ want Karen to eat you." 

Cady huffed out a breathless laugh, still shaking off his entrancement. "Hypocrite."

"Keep insulting the person who just prevented us from being shot at that thing like a missile and crushed to bits, Cady. Go ahead. See where we end up."

Cady snorted. "Sorry, sorry, it just- the mental image of us barreling into her mouth, completely helpless and just absolutely zooming right into her is absolutely hysterical.

Val tried to maintain a frown, but eventually even he had to break into a smile. "Yeah, okay, I'll give you that one."

It was always a treat when Cady managed to coax a smile out of Val. They weren't particularly rare, especially as Cady had gotten to know Val over the past three years, but they were brighter than Karen's and nearly as alluring.

"She is beautiful, though," Cady said softly.

Val's frown returned. "She's fascinating, Cady, yes. But she's also a 19 meter sea monster who could easily kill any and every creature in the ocean, including us. Stop gushing over her like a cishet man admiring a car."

Cady raised a brow. "Jealous?"

"You wish!" Val replied, rolling his eyes. "As soon as our four years are done and Uncle Sam decides we're free to see the sun again, I am moving to Bolivia and living out my days in peace without you."

"You wouldn't be able to stand a week without me," Cady countered. "You'd last maybe a day and then come back begging for my company."

"If I come begging for your company then I need to get checked out by a licensed therapist for stockholm syndrome," Val retorted.

"Is that a fact?"

"Absolutely! I'd bet my life savings on the fact that is we were beauty and the beast, I'd be beauty and you'd be the uptight monster with a loveable soft side that I'd slowly see the nicer side of until we danced in the moonlight and you transformed into, like, a _less_ uptight monster."

"Did you even _see_ the mov-"

The submarine suddenly lurched to the right, and the level sensor beeped desperately.

After he restored his balance, Cady reached to the level sensor, turned the alarm down and took control of the submarine to return it to an even level. To his right, Val frantically scanned through the sensors for anything that might have caused the disruption.

*"No disturbances ahead," Val said. More gravely, he repeated, "No disturbances ahead."

Cady grunted in acknowledgement, understanding the implication. "Behind?" he asked.

"Nothing," Val answered. The periscope didn't show anything either. Cady pushed it closed and turned to the foot lever, pulling it up. They'd have to check the foot for damage later.

"Wool-Smith, Thoreau, what's happening?"

"Jude!" Cady jumped. "You're supposed to be sleeping!"

"Kind of difficult when we're rocking like a spring rider."

"Karen's off radar," Val supplied, which- yeah, Cady should have started with that. "Not showing up on sensors ahead or behind."

"What?" Jude stepped up to the panels, scanning over them quickly. to confirm what Val had said for herself. "If she's not within linear range, then she has to be-" A solid _thump_ sounded from the top of the submarine. "Above us." 

There was a terrible grating, scraping noise from the roof, jarring the ship once more. Jude grunted. "Steer us _out_ of here before she tears us apart," she ordered.

"Yes ma'am," Cady responded. But when he tried, the sub managed a single foot forward before jerking back and to a halt. Cady tried again, cursing when his efforts came to no avail. "She's latched on," he realized. "We can't move."

There was a pause of silence as his words were registered.

"We could set off the alarms, try to scare her?" Cady offered.

Jude shook her head. "Even if it worked and she tried to get away, ripping her suckers too quickly would tear up the submarine and cut her _and_ us up. We just have to wait."

"Wait?" Val repeated incredulously.

"You got a better idea, Thoreau?"

"No," he admitted.

And so they waited. A minute passed. More. Without the digital clock on the panel, it time passed wouldn't have been clearer than somewhere between seconds and hours. As it was, it was five minutes and three seconds when Cady felt something.

He looked to his shoulder to find a wet drop, something that seemed so utterly out of place, like seeing a helicopter in a pool, that for a second, all he could do was stare. Then he looked up to the periscope opening. Frowning, Cady pulled down the periscope eyepiece. He saw nothing of the sea, which was infinitely more troubling than any other possibility.

Because what he saw, instead, was crushed up metal and glass. and a single droplet of water poised to fall from an unseen tear in the now crushed-up periscope. Before he could mention the leak, there was a familiar, discordant _hum_. Or, not a hum. A melody. A song.

And then another ripping noise, this time from the back of the submarine, and far less pleasant than Karen's call. The scraping, pulling, fracturing of metal. The submarine was thrown sideways, hitting a trench wall and setting the floor slanted. Sensors screamed like terrified children, all of which Jude reflexively tended to and shut off one by one, cursing loudly all the way. Understandable, Cady felt, because the nuclear reactor monitor was one of them.

Jude turned on the radio. "Leviathan to Washington, do you copy?" she said. "Leviathan to Washington, do you copy?"

The answer came staticy and noise-polluted, but it came. "Washington to Leviathan, I copy."

"Code L365. I repeat, Code L365. Our nuclear reactor is faltering. In this state, we- we can't get to the surface alone. Requesting a rescue team. Do you copy?"

There was silence on the other side, and Cady shared a look with Val. Val's expression was unreadable, but the feeling of dread shared was unmistakable.

A new voice, clearer now, answered. "Dr Lucy Jude?" When Jude took a moment to pause, the voice took advantage of the silence to continue, "Director John Whittacre here. Can you confirm for me that the nuclear reactor is salvageable?"

Cady looked toward the back of the submarine, as if she could make the nuclear reactor out from where she was if she tried. "No, sir," she answered. "Not by those onboard. It's failing, and our battery won't last long enough for us to make it to the surface in this state. Requesting a rescue team. Over."

"Mm. So not salvageable. Well, the, uh, Leviathan-- the actual one, not the submarine. It okay?"

Judy answered hesitantly, "The macromarinus teuthida is alive, sir. Over."

"Good, good. Well, let us know if the situation with the nuclear reactor changes. Do do us a favor and if you are going to be killed by water pressure or drowning or the kraken or whatever--" the audio was broken up by a staticy laugh-- "Not that I expect you to die! Not at all, you do your best to survive now. But if you were to die, please do all stay in one room small enough so the mess isn't too bad, yeah?"

"What!?" said Cady.

"Sir-!" Jude tried to protest, to no avail when the radio broke into staticy silence, and around the front window came a huge single eye. Cady froze.

It flickered about like searchlights, and he felt all too much like he was being watched. Him, specifically-- and not just watched, but seen. An ant under scrutiny of a cosmic giant who, with a twitch, could crush him. _Utterly_ crush him.

As if on cue, the metal of the submarine creaked faintly, and all the noise cut out, even the radio. What was left was a stunned silence silence.

 _True_ silence. The likes of which Cady hadn't heard in years. No hum of a nuclear reactor, no hum of electricity, no banter or orders given, no beeping, no alarms. Just the hallowing quiet of the void, and a single eye staring into Cady's soul.

Val stepped closer to Cady as the eye moved on, replaced with slick skin interrupted only by Karen's huge gills, which cut through her body, skyscrapers against the dark, slick sky of a titan.

But the terrifying sight was made holy by the glow of Karen's innards, shining through the slits in her side as she passed and the three of them stood and watched in the only silence you could find in the void on earth: the depths of the ocean, even as it was broken by Karen's screaming song. And even as his hand found Val's Cady couldn't look away from the beautiful sight, couldn't stop listening and falling in love with her screams, her indignant demands that he pay attention to her and only her.

But then if faded away, and her form passed from view of the window, but her song chased the silence away. The three of them stood helplessly listening in a submarine floating in the darkness, in an absent void of deep space without orbit, without sunlight or even starlight. The only place where Nothing found a home on earth. 


	4. Outpost

Every day, Ladder tidied the outpost, checked in with headquarters, and watched. And watched. And watched.

And every day at noon, they arrived to kill him. Tall, broken-jointed creatures who were more limb than torso. He kept his eyes on the horizon, but the mirage brought on by the heat always made it unclear how far out they were, and they moved quickly, their arms and legs bent at odd angles. 

Sometimes, he tried to run. Every part of him strained to run away; his muscles tensed, but he stood frozen in place, paralyzed despite his best efforts.

And they came. And they touched him, with narrowed white eyes, too-big hands, kissing him with absent mouths, and singing angrily in his ear, melodies as purple as the bruises that grew where their bodies grazed his. Tears streamed down his face. Their song smothered and smothered and smothered. He tried to breathe, but he inhaled more of them than he did air. The edges of his vision grew darker, blacker, until it matched their flesh. His lungs grew welts, his throat melted through, and his eyes burned in his skull.

Every day, Ladder tidied the outpost, checked in with headquarters, and watched. And watched. And watched.


	5. One-Shot

He took a deep breath, steeling himself. He was an actor. A fake actor for rich people's old-fashioned version of tv, but still. He could do this.  _ He could do this. _

He stepped out from the hallway, striding confidently toward the suited man. "Excuse me, sir!"

The man eyed Ditri warily. "Wh-"

"Your superior is with Mr. Elias Valley, I presume?"

"Who are you?"

"Who am I? I'm Ditri Moore, you dimwit. Elias sent me to tell you you are needed!"

"For?"

Ditri shrugged. "Something about a diamond ore they found? Not sure, but it sounded important!"

The man's eyes widened, and he straightened his tie. "Right- right," he said, starting to move away from the entrance. Ditri caught Becca creeping forward out of the corner of his eye.

"Might want to pick up the pace!" Ditri added. "Like I said, it did sound important. I'm not much of a businessman but it seems like a future financial prospect. Just right down this hall to find them, I'll watch the ship!"

The man turned to the way Ditri and Becca had just come from, the direction Becca was still padding through carefully. Ditri jumped in front of him. "Ah, I know I know a shortcut," Ditri said. "Follow me." He led the suited man in the opposite direction. He only glanced over his shoulder once, to spot Becca's curly hair disappearing behind a door within the ship. He hoped to the gods she'd make it somewhere safe, even if he couldn't.

As he turned back, leading the man in an unknown direction-- who knew how he'd get out of this mess without getting arrested or something-- he felt a sense of defeat, but not a sense of loss. Despite all his reservations over the years to escape the endless, stupid cycle Ditri had been stuck in, he'd still been here all these years. It wasn't a fate as new for him as it would be for Becca.

One of these days he'd actually escape and get a well-paying job on some huge planet with big cities and farms, and trees. One of these days. Or one of these months. Or years.

Ditri could wait. 


End file.
